I was talking with somebody the other night about how one way you can tell when something is fundamentally “true” on some like mystical level, is that you get this feeling from it - from hearing it, or seeing it, or whatever - this feeling of remembering. Like something that was lost has come back to you, and that it was you were part of it, or it a part of you, all along.

I came across today the term for that in a comic online by R. Crumb about the mystical revelation/experience that Philip K. Dick underwent, which later lead to his novel VALIS. The comic is really cool. The word is “anamnesis,” which Dick uses to describe a “loss of forgetfulness.” It is triggered when he sees a golden Christian fish necklace on a pharmacy delivery girl. He instantly remembers all this stuff about time overlapping, and well… I don’t want to get into describing all of it.

Anyway, there is also a page I found on one of the Theosophical sites about this idea of anamnesis, which they are equating with soul-memory.